Grief and Politics

Thursday, New York Times Bureau Chief Jennifer Steinhauer, wrote a good round up of the emotional/cultural/legal winds that still swirl around the murder of Jamiel Shaw.

(Your faithful blogger is one of those quoted.)

Here’s how it opens:

Jamiel Shaw Sr. never gave much thought to the immigration status of gang members in his South Los Angeles neighborhood. With his military wife deployed to Iraq and two sons to raise, there were football practices to manage, shoes to buy, college applications to consider.

But in the two months since his older son, Jamiel Jr., was gunned down by a man the police say is a gang member who was here illegally from Mexico, Mr. Shaw has been able to think of little else.

“I don’t care about illegal people who are working here and taking care of themselves,” Mr. Shaw said. “I just feel I am obligated to target illegal aliens in gangs.”

A preliminary hearing in the killing of Jamiel Shaw Jr. is set to begin here on Thursday. Jamiel Jr. — who was black and, according to the police, not known to be affiliated with gangs — and a simmering unease about illegal immigration have unleashed a swell of opposition to the city’s hands-off policy toward immigration enforcement.

The Los Angeles Police Department was one of the first in the nation — nearly three decades ago — to institute a procedure that prohibits officers from initiating contact with people for the sole purpose of learning their immigration status. The procedure, known as Special Order 40, was designed in part to reassure illegal immigrants who historically had shied from reporting crimes and assisting police investigations.

But in the context of contemporary immigration politics, the procedure is now perceived in black neighborhoods and beyond as a roadblock to using immigration laws as a tool against Latino gang violence. A push to reverse the procedure, led by Mr. Shaw and viewed by many as a symbol of deeper racial conflicts in South Los Angeles, has inflamed tensions between many blacks and Hispanic immigrants, groups long resentful of each other as shifting demographics and a smattering of racially motivated killings have racked South Los Angeles.

“I think you can assume the resentments are pretty widespread,” said Connie Rice, a civil rights activist and lawyer. “There has been a huge turnover in a 20-year period, and so the tensions get expressed in a lot of other ways. The African-American community is feeling under siege, and it is always easier to strike out at the ‘other.’ “

[snip]

But the assault on Special Order 40 has brought sharp criticism from some immigrant advocacy groups and a rebuke from Chief Bratton, who said he viewed the alternative as institutionalized racial profiling.

Nothing in the order prevents law enforcement officials from asking people about their immigration status when arrested, or reporting people charged with crimes to immigration officials; but the order prohibits the police from pursing illegal immigrants for their illegal status alone.

“We make very concerted efforts to deal with the criminal element in the immigrant community,” Mr. Bratton said. “But I’m not going to aggressively pursue people whose only crime is to come into this country illegally.”

Further, Mr. Bratton said, “stopping everyone who looks like an immigrant to inquire about their gang status would only inflame racial tensions.”

“This is a city that’s extremely race conscious,” he said.

Many police officials and others believe that small pockets of racial tension are being exploited by anti-immigrant groups.

“What we largely see are people living together, going to school together, intermarrying and living together just fine,” said Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz, who oversees police operations in many gang-infested Los Angeles neighborhoods. “Why would we let gang members define race relations in this city?”

There’s lots more here.

NOTE: FOR THOSE WHO READ AN EARLIER VERSION OF THIS POST, YOU’RE NOT IMAGINING THINGS. I DID CHANGE THE HEADLINE. (SEE COMMENTS)